Sure, sounds like laziness as mentioned before. The non-responsive designs "work" because your users haven't experienced something better
Why Responsive Design Is Not Worth It
131–139 of 139 posts
Re: Why Responsive Design Is Not Worth It
#132This article seems way off in so many different aspects, especially the example where they keep the sidebar beside the text on the mobile version and say it is better.
I understand the point of view that responsive isn't the answer to everything, but saying that dekstop versions of sites 'work' couldn't be more wrong in terms of just about everything.
Re: Why Responsive Design Is Not Worth It
#133starbucks.com is a great example of how responsive design can be brilliant. Try resizing your window.
Re: Why Responsive Design Is Not Worth It
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
So many people talk about responsive design taking longer and being not worth the effort.... That's true if you start with the desktop and try and work your way backwards to the small screen, which is how a lot of designers look at it, I think. If you take a progressive enhancement approach and work your way up from low-end mobile to full-featured desktop, the process is 100x easier and the end result is, in my exper…
That's exactly how I started, with the low-end mobile and worked my way up. Check out a little project I made using css media queries. http://www.TimeForZen.com (resize the window width to mimic tablet and smart phone widths) It didn't defeat user expectation, it didn't cost more and take longer, it works better than a non responsive design would, it doesn't really save any bandwidth but it does make code maintenance…
When I tap-zoom the text in your "about" page on my (retina, iOS 6) iPad, the text box moves off the screen to the left, and when I scroll down on the same page, the top of the text box moves down with the viewport. Sadly, I have come to "expect" these sorts of strange behaviors on responsive sites...
Re: Why Responsive Design Is Not Worth It
#135Uhm... Anyone else have a hard time reading this on iPhone?
Re: Why Responsive Design Is Not Worth It
#136Preface by saying responsive design _can_ be worth it. That said: If your mobile phone has so much trouble displaying a 960px width static centered website (the norm on the current web), so much so, that your mobile browser demands a different design, then I posit your design isn't broken, some mobile browsers are broken. I expect that in the near future, when resolutions get upped and mobile browsing experiences adv…
You're forgetting that old, less capable devices are still widely used, all around the world, and will be for many years to come. Don't forget a basic principle of the web: Accessibility.
Seriously. Not to mention even if his "960pix wide" site is displayable that doesn't mean it will be usable on a very small screen (or window -- being able to shrink one's browser window can be very useful, but many sites become utterly unusable).
My phone has high-resolution screen, but it's pretty small too, and it can easily display stuff that's a complete pain to actually read because the font size is so small.
His examples of "just fine" non-responsive designs in small windows are, well, pretty horrible.
I dunno if this guy is ego-driven ("I will never allow my beautiful site design to be besmirched just to suit its users!") or just lazy, but one thing is clear: he doesn't care very much about his users...
Re: Why Responsive Design Is Not Worth It
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems the whole brunt of the article is, "Eh, it's good enough the way it is." It's just lazy and useless.
Actually, I think he's suggestion that we should let the hardware manufacturers and OS providers worry about scaling content to their screens/OS, rather than doing it all client side.
The hardware/OS-providers will almost always do a far worse job though, because they simply don't have enough information. Just using smaller pixels or hardware scaling/filtering to linearly scale down a "big browser" site typically results in an unreadable page at typical mobile screen-sizes.
Useful size-adaptability is all about knowing what's important and what's not, and what constraints need to be maintained for usability. The site author knows these things very well, but the hardware / OS / browser do not.
Re: Why Responsive Design Is Not Worth It
#138"I am a fan of responsive (or alternative) design in certain situations – for example, when dealing with a web application whose desktop design could not practically be contained within a mobile device’s screen." That's the whole idea.
My thoughts exactly. The article can seemingly be reduced to "Responsive design is not worth it (except when it is)"
"Responsive design is (often) not worth it"
Re: Why Responsive Design Is Not Worth It
#139Let's not feed the troll. This is utter nonsense.